The Second Battle of Hoover Dam
The Second Battle of Hoover Dam came and went. To everyone there it felt like it was forever, that time stopped and nothing came after, but in truth it was only a brief clash when the bull met the bear. At the Dam the sky fell, the Earth shook, men and women died by the score, by bullet and bomb and sword and steel and by each others' hands. The future was decided through some of the worst violence that part of the world had ever seen, but eventually the dust did clear. The future, as it always does, came upon everyone, quick and cold and quiet like a killer in the night.
Caesar died, as Julia and the Daughters of Hecate predicted. Lanius failed to conquer the Dam and Vegas, so spectacularly that there were rumors that the courier personally castrated him at Fortification Hill. The remaining Legionaries that didn't die on the banks of the Colorado limped home, broken by Vegas like so many gamblers before them. Caesar's once-mighty army found itself wracked with desertions, insubordination, and declining faith in an idea that many of them suddenly realized they never understood. Unsure of what they'd find when they returned to Flagstaff the Legion almost fell apart in just a few short weeks after their ignoble defeat at the Dam.
But unbeknownst to Edward Sallow's losers waiting for them back in the four corners wasteland was salvation. In the east a new rosy-fingered dawn rose and they found their new God, and new purpose in the new Empire. The Grandson of Mars welcomed his frustrated children with open arms. Lanius was a non-factor in Caesar Apollo's ascension. Vulpes Inculta, as one of the last remaining survivors of Caesar's inner circle endorsed the new Caesar, just as he promised he would, and gave the new princep legitimacy. He hadn't told Edward about Julia's proposal and, ultimately, he did betray his dux for pussy.
Fortunately, Caesar Apollo held his "father's" kingdom together, through extraordinary means. His first act was to release every Legionary from service, and grant them a (mostly-useless) plot of land in the Empire, with the offer to re-enlist and sell their plot back to Caesar for coin. Some of the older, less-capable Legionaries declined to re-enlist and sought opportunities elsewhere, while some enterprising Centurions with their own fortunes personally bought up land from their former subordinates and decided to retire in comfort from service, creating a new patrician class in the wasteland.
Most re-enlisted, though, and, understanding implicitly if not consciously that whatever land they were being gifted for their service was worth less than what their new leader was willing to pay for it, so they took their freshly-minted coin and rejoined the Legion under Caesar Apollo's land buy-back scheme. Enough soldiers were committed to a unified people under an autocrat (regardless of his age or dubious authenticity) to enforce the legitimacy of the new state. Lines were drawn across the whole of the Southwestern wasteland, across all of what used to be Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. Roads were built, municipalities marked, temples drafted, bureaucrats supplied with official documents. Slowly, the process of metamorphosing the Legion from a band of raiders with matching uniforms, an admittedly disciplined crew of rapists and pillagers and savages, into a real nation began.